For Pennsylvania Ballet, the future of ballet depends on young males. As one of the premier US ballet companies, the artistic director – Angel Corella – believes this is where the successful development of ballet lies. The number of boys beginning ballet training, and continuing this into later life, is significantly less than girls. Corella maintains that ballet requires gender balance because every ballet has specific choreographed roles and responsibilities for men and women.
Despite this, it appears boys are privy to more opportunities and greater roles, simply because there are less of them, compared with female competition for that gender. In order to encourage boys to continue with ballet training, gender stereotypes must be broken to help boys consider ballet to be as exciting, rewarding, challenging and as athletic as more traditional pursuits such as football or basketball, balancing the competition divide.
For Pennsylvania Ballet, there is a ballet school for boys and girls that seeks to maintain that all important balance. Many boys suffer ridicule and bullying simply because they enjoy dance, as sadly it is still often seen as effeminate rather than recognised for its requirements of strength, athleticism and artistry. Additionally it is one of the few professions that require complete engagement of every aspect of your being; mentally, emotionally and physically.
Corella believes you have to make ballet as easy to experience as possible, especially for young males, creating a positive atmosphere and helping families support a boy’s passion for ballet. It is therefore the role of ballet companies to create the vision and capture the dreams of children. Pennsylvania Ballet school has seven levels of training in the student division, in addition to pre-ballet classes. Boys train together to normalise the experience, and each year students are selected exclusively from the school to appear with the company in its annual production of Balanchine’s The Nutcracker: the younger they start, the better!